This invention relates to primary tillage apparatus, and more particularly, to a coulter assembly for use with primary tillage apparatus for cutting and clearing residue from the path of primary tillage tools.
As used herein, the term "primary tillage tools" includes moldboard plows, chisel plows, and wide-sweep plows, as well as subsoilers, chisels and rippers. The term is not intended to include disk tillers or rotary tillers.
As used herein, primary tillage tools refers to tillage tools such as moldboard plows, chisel plows and other subsoilers which work the soil to a depth of at least eight inches. When a field being tilled contains severe crop residue, such as cornstalks, sugarcane, or the like, the tillage tools become entangled or blocked up with the trash which straddles the shank and is dragged along, greatly increasing the drag force on the implement. When residue accumulates and affects operation, the farmer must stop the tractor and clear the residue from the tillage tools, which is not only annoying to the farmer but also makes for inefficient tillage.
One attempt to alleviate this problem has been the addition of a single conventional coulter ahead of one or more of the tillage tools to cut the residue in the path of the tillage tool. This arrangement is not particularly successful because the stalks are merely cut and are not removed from the path. Further, if the coulters are canted, they add side draft to the tillage apparatus, an undesirable side effect.
Accordingly, it is common practice to employ stalk choppers which are pulled through the field to cut the trash residue. However, there are significant drawbacks with this practice. A primary disadvantage is that the use of a stalk chopper requires an additional pass through the field, resulting in increased operating costs to the farmer, particularly in the form of fuel expenses. Moreover, the requirement that the farmer own and maintain a separate stalk chopping implement further increases operating costs.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a tillage apparatus for primary tillage applications which is substantially free of being blocked up under severe residue conditions and which is not characterized by increased side draft in use.